May 3, 2017

Roll Trump Roll

Trump Got rolled:  The continuing budget resolution achieved few of Trump’s priorities but included much of what the Democrats wanted.  No money for the beautiful wall but funding for the National Institutes of Health, the National Endowment for the Arts, Elmo and Ernie, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Center for Disease Control, Miner’s Health, and Planned Parenthood.  Trump got an increase in Military spending and a modest amount of border control money but nothing that can be used for a new wall.  Monday, his team championed the resolution as a clear win for the American people while Nancy Pelosi took a victory lap.  Tuesday Trump woke up to the reality that if Pelosi was happy he must have been rolled.  His mood wasn’t helped when Rush Limbaugh attacked his feckless funding package and questioned why anyone would vote Republican if this is what they get. To change the narrative, Trump resorted to smoke and mirrors. He sent Budget Director Mulvaney into a den of skeptical reporters to show pictures of a wall under construction in an attempt to spin the resolution into a massive Trump victory.  One problem, the wall in the picture wasn’t new, just a repair job to an existing segment that was funded last year by Obama.   

The Budget Game:  With the government funded through September, the battle for wall funding and the “deconstruction of the administrative state” now moves to next year’s budget.  Smarting from the first round of the budget game, Trump tweet-threatened that he will close the government down in September if he doesn’t get what he wants in next year’s budget.  Facing the reality that passage of a full year budget will require bipartisan support forcing negotiation with the very wily Pelosi and Schumer, Trump is calling for Senate Majority Leader McConnell to agree to invoke the nuclear option used to seat Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, dispensing with the sixty vote requirement for budget passage. McConnell shrugged it off, he has already pledged that the Senate will stick with the sixty vote requirement.

The Jimmy Kimmel Effect:   Jimmy Kimmel’s newborn son had emergency open heart surgery hours after he was born last week.  Monday night Kimmel got emotional while describing his son’s ordeal, his son who will forever have a “preexisting condition.”  He went on to talk about the importance of health insurance for all.  Kimmel’s speech went viral just as Republican’s were being asked to vote for the newest version of Trumpcare, the one that allows States to throw anyone with a preexisting condition into a high premium, high risk pool.  As of Tuesday night, twenty-one Republican members of Congress will vote no on Trumpcare.  One of them, Fred Upton, a prominent Republican from Michigan who helped write the first version of Trumpcare, switched his vote to no because of the preexisting condition provision.  Somewhere around eighteen Republicans have still not announced how they will vote.  If just one of them moves into the no column, Trumpcare will go down for the third time.  Telling constituents that their sick children, people with high blood pressure, allergies, cancer, diabetes and just about anything that insurance companies don’t like won’t be able to get affordable health insurance is getting more difficult. Trump and Republican leadership are sticking with the fiction that Trumpcare provides affordable coverage for all.  In a final act of desperation Mulvaney is threatening to sabotage Obamacare by holding up promised subsidy payments.

The Russian Game:  Trump spoke with Putin today primarily about finding a path forward to a Syrian ceasefire but also about North Korea and terrorism. He probably did not bring up Russian election interference, the subject of next week’s House Intelligence Committee hearing where Sally Yates is expected to say that she forcefully told White House Counsel McGahn that Michael Flynn was seriously compromised two days before her abrupt firing over the still on hold travel ban.  Her testimony will be in direct conflict with White House claims that she merely gave them a heads up. 

Friends with Benefits:  The State Department and National Security Council were baffled when Trump invited Philippines strongman Duterte to join him at the White House for meatloaf and chocolate cake. They probably haven’t seen the promotional material for Trump Tower Manila that until this week featured cameos by The Donald and Ivanka.  Nor did they know that the head of the company that built Trump Tower Manila is Duterte’s special envoy to the U.S.